Psychosis as a transformation of the flesh : some Merleau-Pontian musings on madness

english

2025

volume 57, issue 2

Mer leau-Ponty   phenomenology   phenomenology of language   philosophy of psychiatry   psychosis,

Slovensko filozofsko društvo
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

Psychosis is often understood in one of two ways: as a break down of cognitive circuitry, which has nothing to teach us as far as phenomenology is concerned and that can be treated only by focusing on the underlying causal processes that bring it about (reduction ism and the ‘madness-as-nonsense’ view), or, alternatively, as a different interpretation of reality, one with nothing distinctly pathological about it (relativism). In this paper, I outline a different approach, drawing largely on Merleau-Ponty’s work, which aims to encompass both the properly unintelligible (pathological) and intelligible (expres sive, phenomenologically informative) aspects of psychosis. By applying Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of expression to the problem of psychosis and psychotic language, the latter can be understood as an attempt at expression– a kind of speech without language that is most often in complete, but that can under specific circumstances be made intelligible to others, often to significant therapeutic benefit. The present paper thus aims to complement and conceptually elucidate recent work in phenomenological psychiatry, which has demonstrated the clinical significance of enabling patients to express various aspects of their psychotic episodes.

07.07.2026